Shogun

He saw her hands go to the crimson again, and again she pushed and this time Mariko forced herself upright. She wavered and almost fell, then her feet moved and slowly she tottered across the crimson and reeled helplessly toward the main door. Blackthorne decided that she had done enough, had endured enough, had proved enough, so he came forward and caught her in his arms and lifted her up just as her mind left her.

For a moment he stood there in the arena alone, proud that he was alone and that he had decided. She lay like a broken doll in his arms. Then he carried her inside and no one moved or barred his path.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

The attack on the Browns’ stronghold began in the darkest reaches of the night, two or three hours before dawn. The first wave of ten ninja—the infamous Stealthy Ones—came over the roofs of the battlements opposite, now unguarded by Grays. They threw cloth-covered grappling hooks on ropes over to the other roof and swung across the chasm like so many spiders. They wore tight-fitting clothes of black and black tabi and black masks. Their hands and faces were also blackened. These men were lightly armed with chain knives and shuriken—small, star-shaped, needle-sharp, poison-tipped throwing barbs and discs that were the size of a man’s palm. On their backs were slung haversacks and short thin poles.

Ninja were mercenaries. They were artists in stealth, specialists in the disreputable—in espionage, infiltration, and sudden death.

The ten men landed noiselessly. They re-coiled the grapples, and four of them hooked the grapples again onto a projection and immediately swung downward to a veranda twenty feet below. Once they had reached it, as noiselessly, their comrades unhooked the grapples, dropped them down, and moved across the tiles to infiltrate another area.

A tile cracked under one man’s foot and they all froze. In the forecourt, three stories and sixty feet below, Sumiyori stopped on his rounds and looked up. His eyes squinted into the darkness. He waited without moving, his mouth open a fraction to improve his hearing, his eyes sweeping slowly. The roof with the ninja was in shadow, the moon faint, the stars heavy in the thick humid air. The men stayed absolutely still, even their breathing controlled and imperceptible, seemingly as inanimate as the tiles upon which they stood.

Sumiyori made another circuit with his eyes and with his ears, and then another, and, still not sure, he walked out into the forecourt to see more clearly. Now the four ninja on the veranda were also within his field of vision but they were as motionless as the others and he did not notice them either.

“Hey,” he called to the guards on the gateway, the doors tight barred now, “you see anything—hear anything?”

“No, Captain,” the alert sentries said. “The roof tiles are always chattering, shifting a bit—it’s the damp or the heat, perhaps.”

Sumiyori said to one of them, “Go up there and have a look. Better still, tell the top-floor guards to make a search just in case.”

The soldier hurried off. Sumiyori stared up again, then half shrugged and, reassured, continued his patrol. The other samurai went back to their posts, watching outward.

On the rooftop and on the veranda the ninja waited in their frozen positions. Not even their eyes moved. They were schooled to remain immobile for hours if need be—just one part of their perpetual training. Then the leader motioned to them and at once they again moved to the attack. Their grapples and ropes took them quietly to another veranda where they could slide through the narrow windows in the granite walls. Below this top floor, all other windows—defense positions for bowmen—were so narrow that they could not be entered from outside. At another signal the two groups entered simultaneously.

Both rooms were in darkness, with ten Browns sleeping in neat lines. They were put to death quickly and almost noiselessly, a single knife thrust in the throat for most, the raiders’ trained senses taking them unerringly to their targets, and in moments the last of the Browns was thrashing desperately, his warning shout garroted just as it had begun. Then, the rooms secured, the doors secured, the leader took out a flint and tinder and lit a candle and carried it, cupped carefully, to the window and signaled three times into the night. Behind him his men were making doubly sure that every Brown was quite dead. The leader repeated the signal, then came away from the window and motioned with his hand, speaking to them in sign language with his fingers.

At once the raiders undid their haversacks and readied their attack weapons—short, sickle-shaped, double- edged knives with a chain attached to the haft, weighted at the end of the chain, and shuriken and throwing knives. At another order, selected men unsheathed the short poles. These were telescoped spears and blow pipes that sprang into full length with startling speed. And as each man completed his preparations he knelt, settled himself facing the door, and, seemingly without conscious effort, became totally motionless. Now the last man was ready. The leader blew out the candle.

When the city bells toned the middle of the Hour of the Tiger—four of the clock, an hour before dawn—the second wave of ninja infiltrated. Twenty slid silently out of a large, disused culvert that once had serviced the rivulets of the garden. All these men wore swords. Like so many shadows, they swarmed into position among the shrubs and bushes, became motionless and almost invisible. At the same time another group of twenty came up from the ground by ropes and grapples to attack the battlement that overlooked the forecourt and garden.

Two Browns were on the battlements, carefully watching the empty roofs across the avenue. Then one of the Browns glanced around and saw the grapples behind them and he began to point in alarm. His comrade opened his mouth to shout a warning when the first ninja made the embrasure and, with a whipping snap of his wrist, sent a barbed shuriken whirling into this samurai’s face and mouth, hideously strangling the shout, and hurled himself forward at the other samurai, his outstretched hand now a lethal weapon, the thumb and forefinger extended, and he stabbed for the jugular. The impact paralyzed the samurai, another vicious blow broke his neck with a dry crack, and the ninja jumped at the first agonized samurai, who was clawing at the barbs embedded deeply in his mouth and face, the poison already working.

With a final supreme effort, the dying samurai ripped out his short stabbing sword and struck. His blow sliced deep and the ninja gasped but this did not stop the rush and his hand slammed into the Brown’s throat, snapping the man’s head back and dislocating his spine. The samurai was dead on his feet.

The ninja was bleeding badly but he made no sound and still held on to the dead Brown, lowering him carefully to the stone flags, sinking to his knees beside him. All the ninja had climbed up the ropes now and stood on the battlement. They bypassed their wounded comrade until the battlement was secured. The wounded man was still on his knees beside the dead Browns, holding his side. The leader examined the wound. Blood was spurting in a steady stream. He shook his head and spoke with his fingers and the man nodded and dragged himself painfully to a corner, the blood leaving a wide trail. He made himself comfortable, leaning against the stone, and took out a shuriken. He scratched the back of one hand several times with the poison barbs, then found his stiletto, put the point at the base of his throat and, two-handed, with all his strength, he thrust upward.

The leader made sure this man was dead then went back to the fortified door that led inside. He opened it cautiously. At that moment they heard footsteps approaching and at once melted back into ambush position.

In the corridor of this, the west wing, Sumiyori was approaching with ten Browns. He dropped two off near the battlement door and, not stopping, walked on. These two reliefs went out onto the battlement as Sumiyori turned the far corner and went down a flight of circular steps. At the bottom was another checkpoint and the two tired samurai bowed and were replaced.

“Pick up the others and go back to your quarters. You’ll be wakened at dawn,” Sumiyori said.

“Yes, Captain.”

The two samurai walked back up the steps, glad to be off duty. Sumiyori continued on down the next corridor, replacing sentries. At length he stopped outside a door and knocked, the last two guards with him.

“Yabu-san?”

“Yes?” The voice was sleepy.